On the Ziade & Ford: Advisors show, Rich explains how managers need to be seen to be doing useful work:
Rich Ziade: Yeah. I’m gonna give you four pieces of advice.
Paul Ford: Okay.
RZ: First, get in there and do work that, raises an eyebrow as to why that person is doing that work.
PF: Okay, so wait a minute, hold on, cause this was a, this was a problem I used to program or jump in on things. That’s a disaster when the boss starts to do a project.
RZ: Yeah craftspeople don’t like it when you come into the, the wood shop, right? They don’t like, they don’t, they don’t appreciate it. Um, they are the experts, you are not. You have your job, they have theirs. But I don’t mean you need to do their work. You need to do work, you need to not just be waiting for deliverables and wagging your finger. That may be you holding up and writing a major like position document about the strategy of the business. That might be something else. That might be you saying, you know what? I don’t want you just deliver this to me. I wanna workshop this with you, brainstorm before you hold up and do stuff. I want to work with you, I want to collaborate with you. That is different than the corner office and just “what’s going on in there? He doesn’t seem to do anything”.
On the Aboard podcast, Paul reflects on what the word ‘cookie’ should really be in the context of tracking users on the web:
Paul Ford: You know the greatest bit [of] unintentional branding on Earth is the word cookie.
Rich Ziade: I mean it’s insane.
PF: It sounds nice, “Oh, hey, you’re giving me a cookie, uh oh, okay, okay”.
RZ: I like cookies.
PF: Well, yeah, it should be called like face licker.
RZ: Yeah.
PF: “Hey, we’re gonna give you some, would you accept five or six face licks?”
…followed by a loud slurp.
It’s so great to have them back in my ears every week.
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